by Jenny Lyn
The few times she’d met his family, they had always seemed really happy, mentally and physically healthy, although abuse could be hidden well. There had been talk of ski trips to Colorado and beach vacations in Florida, and Evie had wanted to visit Paris for their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. Dannie had talked incessantly about boys and possibly becoming a teacher one day. Ryan’s dad—God, what was his name? Daniel, was it?—was more reserved than his wife and children, but polite, if not a bit pretentious about having money. If she remembered correctly, he was pretty high up on the ladder of some Fortune 500 company in Birmingham. Their life back then had all the makings of a picture-perfect American dream—health, wealth, happiness. No visible cracks.
What had happened to them?
When Colleen walked by, Tate snagged her. “Got time for coffee?”
Colleen checked her watch. “I always have time for coffee, especially when you’re buying.”
“Let’s sit outside,” Tate said.
Once they had their coffees and were seated on a stone bench in the outdoor break area, Tate decided to run her quandary past Colleen. “I need to talk to someone.”
“I figured as much.”
Tate frowned. “How so?”
“Well, for one thing, you rarely ask to sit outside during a break, and for another, that stack of files you’ve been working on for the last half hour didn’t get any shorter.”
“It’s annoying how observant you are,” Tate said drolly, but without real malice.
Colleen shrugged. “Somebody has to keep you doctor types in check.”
“So,” Tate said. “This big secret of Ryan’s is slowly driving me insane. I tried really hard to put it out of my head, and I was doing a fairly good job of it, too, until I met some friends of his Sunday and … inadvertently came by some information. Now it’s all I can think about. I’m pretty sure I’ve reached my breaking point, Colleen.”
“Whoa, back up a sec. What’s the information you came by?”
Tate rubbed the back of her neck, uncomfortable with telling Colleen the meager bits she knew thus far, even though she would keep their conversation confidential. Besides that, who would she tell? Maybe instead she was worried Colleen would think badly of her for being so conniving. Harsh word, but that’s how Tate felt she’d been with Elle.
“Well, Ryan finally told me his leaving had something to do with his family, but that’s all he would give me. And to be fair, I could tell it hurt him just to say that much, so I backed off. But then this Sunday I did something truly awful.” She glanced up at Colleen who motioned for her to continue. “I was having this conversation with someone—the friend by association—who knows what happened, and I kind of went along with it like I knew, too, just to see what she’d reveal. But then she said something about Ryan’s mom trying to kill herself as a result of what his dad did and I … I made a noise that pretty much gave away that I didn’t know—”
“Oh Jesus, Tate.”
Tate hung her head. “I know. I’m an awful person, I get that, but aside from my rotten nature, what do I do now?!”
“No, I didn’t mean what you did was awful. A little underhanded, maybe, but with your backstory with Ryan, I think it’s forgivable. His mother tried to commit suicide?”
“Apparently.”
“Poor kid. Whatever his dad did, it must’ve been terrible.”
“Trust me, I’ve run every scenario I can think of through my head at least a hundred times.”
“It’s really not good for you to be this distracted at work either,” Colleen said, not that Tate wasn’t well aware of this already.
Miserable, Tate dropped her face into her hands. “What do I do, Colleen?”
“You have to tell him.”
“But tell him what? That I tricked his best friend’s girlfriend out of information? He’s liable to be furious with me, and rightly so.”
Colleen made a wry face. “Oh, I don’t know. He might find it a huge relief to finally get it off his chest.”
“But I’ll be forcing him to get it off his chest before he’s ready. It’s obviously something traumatic, something that pains him to this day to rehash.”
Tate stood up and walked over to the low concrete wall surrounding the break area. The situation felt hopeless, but she was past the point of being able to ignore it any longer. The barrier between the past and their future seemed as solid as the cool stone wall at her hips. Ryan had to come clean with her, as hard as it was for him to do, otherwise the whys would always be that ugly gray cloud hanging over their heads. Why he left, why he didn’t call or write, why he’d stayed gone so long, why he didn’t love her enough to trust her with the truth.
“I don’t want to lose him, not when I’ve just found him again.”
“He found you, remember?” Colleen joined Tate, dropping a comforting hand to her shoulder. “And if you start with that, everything will be fine.”
Tate dumped her untouched coffee over the wall. It had gone cold anyway, kind of how this subject made her feel. Cold and uncomfortable.
The things your family did were beyond your control. She understood that and in no way held Ryan responsible. It didn’t affect the way she felt about him one iota. But there was still phantom pain from when he’d left her, and in order for their relationship to feel whole and healthy, they needed to get it all out in the open.
“Do you know his dad’s first name?” Colleen asked.
“I think it’s Daniel. Why?”
“You could Google him, see what pops up. Most everything newsworthy makes it onto the internet. At the very least you might find an article in their local paper. It could lessen the desire for you to hear the particulars from him. Then when he does decide to tell you himself, it won’t be such a shock.”
“Or it could just multiply the guilt I already feel for tricking Elle.”
“Who?”
The hospital P.A. system crackled to life, paging Tate back to the ER. “Never mind,” she told Colleen as she headed inside.
Chapter Nine
Ryan was pissed.
Tate wouldn’t answer her phone, wouldn’t return his calls. She’d responded to one text message late last night saying she was exhausted and she’d see him in “a couple of days.”
He understood she worked long hours and that maybe she needed to catch up on her sleep occasionally. She did a tough, trying job, and he had the utmost respect for her and all health professionals in general. Honestly, he wondered how she managed to stay sane with all the horrors she saw on a near daily basis.
But a couple of days? What the fuck did that mean?
Just as soon as he could get away from the restaurant later tonight, he’d find out. Personally.
“Ryan, got a minute?” Kevin asked him before the dinner rush started.
“Sure.” Ryan set the knife he was using aside, wiping his hands on a towel.
Kevin led the way to his cramped, cluttered office and shut the door behind them. Ryan propped himself against a filing cabinet while Kevin sat down in the chair behind his desk.
“What’s up?” Ryan asked.
The sigh Kevin heaved didn’t bode well for whatever he was about to say. “Elle broke down this morning and told me she let something slip about your mother to Tate at the ballgame on Sunday.”
He frowned, replaying Kevin’s news in his head. “How did—”
“Elle know?” Kevin asked, and Ryan nodded. “After she met you, I told her the story, never expecting that she’d one day meet Tate and they’d hit it off so well. I’m sorry, dude.”
“It’s okay,” Ryan said absently. “What exactly did she say to Tate?”
“They were talking about what a great guy you were, and Elle said something to the effect of you being too sweet for all the hell your family put you through. I gathered Tate must’ve … played along so Elle thought she knew everything. When she mentioned your mother’s suicide attempt, Tate caved and admitted she was still in the dark.”
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“Sonofabitch.” Ryan sat down on the corner of Kevin’s desk, rubbing his face.
“It’s been eating Elle alive, worrying about the two of you, and if she caused any problems.”
“This kind of explains a few things actually,” Ryan muttered. The strained smiles she’d given him during the game, the peculiar way she’d acted afterward, the sex marathon after dinner that night, avoiding his calls now. This was exactly the thing Ryan wanted to avoid—her pity—but it was his fault for delaying the inevitable this long.
“Did Elle tell her anything else?”
“No.” Kevin shook his head, looking Ryan straight in the eye. “She asked Tate to be patient with you, that’s all.”
It was Ryan’s turn to sigh heavily. “And she has been. More than I deserve.”
“It was a shitty ordeal, Ryan, and you were a better man than most in how you dealt with it. You can be proud of that, even though it cost you a lot. She’s back in your life again, and it’s probably time you told her everything so the both of you can put it behind you for good.”
Ryan nodded grimly.
Time to pay the piper.
A few hours later, he was ringing Tate’s doorbell. He stepped back so she could see him through the peephole. It was an eternity before there was sound on the other side of the door, but the locks didn’t rattle or click right away. He swore he could hear her breathing through the barrier separating them.
Leaning close to the wood, he said, “Open the door, honey.”
She disengaged the locks and pulled it open. When Ryan stepped through, she pressed her back to the wall behind the door and let go of the knob. He locked them inside before turning to her again.
Tate crumpled like an accordion.
It was hard to believe a human being could look so small and fragile, yet there she was, curling in on herself as if the very air around her was too heavy to bear on her skin. She buried her face in her hands. Her shoulders began to shake with silent sobs.
Ryan crouched down in front of her and pulled her hands away. There was so much distress in her damp green eyes he almost wept, too. “Oh, baby. Come ‘ere.”
She threw herself at him, nearly toppling his body backward. Ryan stood, bringing her with him, then scooped her up and carried her to the couch. He gently deposited her down in one corner of the cushions.
“I think we need a stiff drink,” he mumbled, the “we” in that statement being him mostly, but she probably wouldn’t turn one down.
Ryan very rarely drank anything stronger than beer, but this particular instance demanded something with a much higher proof. He remembered seeing a bottle of vodka buried in the back of Tate’s freezer, frosted over and half-hidden behind some nasty frozen dinners. He grabbed two tumblers, adding a few cubes of ice to each, and carried them and the cold bottle back into the living room.
“I’m so sorry, Ryan,” she said, then sniffed as more tears tracked down her pale cheeks.
He tipped a healthy portion of the liquor into a glass and handed it to her. “I need to know what you’re apologizing for.”
Instead of sitting beside her, he sat across from her on a heavy wooden trunk she used as a coffee table, swallowing a gulp of his drink. The alcohol burned its way to his stomach, but the fine tremors beneath his skin subsided.
Tate looked down at the glass in her hand, tapping one side of it with a nail. “I tricked Elle at the ballgame. She was just being nice—”
“I know about that part already,” Ryan said. “Kevin explained to me earlier tonight that she broke down and told him what she said to you.”
She rubbed her forehead. “God, I’m such a horrible person for putting her in that position. He’s not mad with her, is he?”
“No, they’re fine. She was more worried about us.”
“I’m worried about us, too,” she said, her bottom lip quivering.
Ryan’s heart squeezed tight. He reached out to brush a fresh tear off her cheek. “We’ll be okay, honey, after tonight.”
She nodded weakly. “Since you know about what I did to Elle, I guess I should also tell you I Googled your dad’s name yesterday, but I couldn’t bring myself to read the news articles once they popped up.”
Polishing off the rest of his drink, Ryan set the glass down and rubbed his hands together between his knees. “And what words did you see when the articles popped up?”
Tate resettled herself on the couch, a bit calmer it seemed, now that they were talking. “I saw something about a … a sexual assault on a minor. I stopped reading after that.” She winced, blinking back more tears. “Please tell me it wasn’t Dannie, not that that lessens the seriousness of the crime any.”
Many times he’d wondered if he would ever be able to put the mess with his parents behind him for good. When he’d seen Tate that first night in the hospital hope had flared inside of him, his light at the end of a very long and rocky tunnel. She was what had been missing for him, what he’d been hoping to one day find again, but it could’ve gone badly there, too. Luckily, it hadn’t. His plan to remind her of what they’d once been to each other had worked, their connection still strong if a little threadbare at first.
He’d been through Hell to get to where he was now, and he deserved to be able to finally relax and take a deep breath and get what he wanted instead of doing what his family needed. There were no regrets about the way he’d handled things. Life was always going to toss out obstacles you had to overcome. But having Tate’s love would feel like an absolution.
“It wasn’t Dannie.” He rubbed her knee. “Think you’re ready to hear the rest?”
She nodded.
“Then its time I filled in the blanks.”
****
Tate uncurled herself from the knot she’d worked herself into and scooted closer to the edge of the couch, reaching out to take one of Ryan’s hands in hers in a quiet show of support.
He drew a deep breath, then started to talk.
“About a month before I left Atlanta, Dannie called me one night crying. She said her best friend, Melanie, had been staying over a lot because her parents were having some issues with their marriage. Melanie was fifteen at the time, one year older than Dannie, but somehow in the same grade.
“So anyway one of the times Melanie’s staying over, Dannie wakes up during the night, and Melanie is not in bed. She goes looking for her, finds her in the kitchen with my dad. Dannie said that he … he was kissing Melanie on the mouth, and he had his hand under her shirt.” Ryan cleared his throat, staring down at their clasped hands. “Dannie bolts from the kitchen, totally freaked out by what she’d seen. Melanie comes upstairs, says it’s no big deal, and to please not tell anyone. The next day Dad pulls her aside, tells her he knows it was inappropriate, but that it had only happened the one time—just a kiss and a grope, nothing more. He begs her not to tell Mom because it will only upset her, and he promises it won’t happen again. She called me wondering what to do. She’s thinking if she squeals on Dad, my parents’ marriage will crumble, and Melanie will be mortified and hate her, too.”
“What did you tell her to do?”
“I told her she needed to tell Mom, no matter what Dad said, and that Melanie should not stay over anymore.”
“I guess she didn’t take your advice.”
“She waited too long to decide. By the time she found the courage to say something, it was too late. In hindsight, I shouldn’t have left it up to her to handle. I should’ve called Mom myself the very next day and said ‘Look, something is going on with Dad and Dannie’s friend, and you need to address it.’ But I didn’t. I left it up to Dannie, a fourteen year-old kid, and that was stupid and wrong. I guess I thought everyone would just deny it, based on what Dannie had told me. And I’m sure part of me wanted to believe that my dad, this man I’d looked up to for so many years, was incapable of doing something so horrible.”
“How did he get caught?”
“Melanie’s parents figured out something was
off with their daughter, and when they questioned her, she caved and told them everything. Dad was arrested and charged with sexual assault on a minor under the age of sixteen.
“My dad held a fairly high-ranking position in one of Birmingham’s bigger corporations, so of course he was immediately fired from his job. The company couldn’t afford to have their name attached to a scandal, which is understandable. Meanwhile my mother teetered on the edge of a nervous breakdown. The legal fees were astronomical. They’re blowing through their savings, and she’s being shunned by everyone she’s ever known. Didn’t matter that she knew nothing about what was going on. To outsiders, she’s just as culpable as my father is. Even my paternal grandparents refused financial help. My maternal grandparents are both dead, so that left no one who could help her and Dannie survive the clusterfuck Dad created.”
“Except you,” Tate said simply.
“Well, at that point I was fighting my conscience. Not about what Dad did—that was wrong, no question. He deserved to be punished to the fullest extent of the law. What I struggled with was accepting that the responsibility to get them out of the mess fell solely on my shoulders. Part of me recognized the inevitable, but the rest kept praying for a miracle. My classes were paid up through the end of the semester. I had a little money in savings. After that I would have to apply for scholarships and student loans to finish paying for school, but okay, it was doable.
“Then late one evening I was in the living room studying for a test. You had gone to bed, and Dannie calls me again, hysterical. Mom swallowed a bottle of pills, and she’s been rushed to the hospital. My fourteen year-old sister is a hundred and fifty miles away from me, alone and terrified and…” Ryan blinked away the sheen in his eyes while Tate squeezed his hand. “It felt as if the floor dropped out from beneath my feet. Suddenly I was out of options.”
He lifted her hand to his mouth, pressing his lips to her knuckles. “I stood beside the bed watching you sleep while I ran through every scenario I could think of. None of them worked, so I left.”